Straight from Google – Google does not use the keywords meta tag in web ranking

I’ve heard this before, but was a little skeptical that it was true. Now you can see for yourself – Google does not use your keyword meta tags in web ranking. Great, now I can ignore my keywords, right? Well, not exactly. I think it’s safe to say that as far as Google is concerned you don’t need to add a keyword meta tag, but you still need to be concerned with your keywords in terms of figuring out and tracking how people are finding you and making sure that your content is rich with important keywords. I know that people sort of get hung up in the importance of the meta tags, and in this case, the actual keyword tag is not important at all, but maybe what it represents is important. It is still worthwhile to go through and decide on the keywords you are targeting for your site, as outlined in SEO First Steps. It’s really going to be the backbone of your SEO plan – if you don’t know what your target search terms are you can’t effectively maximize your site to cover them. But, in terms of painstakingly going through and trying to figure out your 10 – 15 keywords for each page – you’re off the hook. Focus instead on your meta title and meta description, as these are looked at by Google and can even show up in your search results.